Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

I

Spring 1985

Yaakov Schlesinger could think only of food.

Idiot, he told himself. Immersed in such beauty and unable to take your mind off your belly.

Unclipping his flashlight from his belt, he beamed it briefly on the southern gate of the campus. Satisfied that the lock was in place, he hitched up his trousers and trudged forward in the darkness, determined to ignore tha gnawing from within.

The Mount Scopus Road climbed suddenly, but it was a rise that he knew well-what was this, his two hundredth patrol?–and he remained sure-footed. Veering to the left, he walked toward the eastern ridge and looked out, with a pleasurable sense of vertigo, at nothingness: the unlit expanse of the Judean wilderness. In less than an hour dawn would break and sunlight would flood the desert like honeyed porridge dripping thickly into an earthenware bowl . . . ach, there it was again. Food.

Still, he rationalized, a bowl was exactly what it looked like to him. Or maybe a dinner plate. A broad, concave disk of desert, chalky-white, seamed with copper, dotted by mesquite and pocked with caves-a gigantic cracked dinner plate tipping into the Dead Sea. Any terrorist foolish enough to try to cross the wilderness would be as conspicuous as a fly on paper, certain to be spotted by the Border Patrol long before reaching the Ma'ale Adumin settlement. Which made his job, he supposed, little more than a formality. An old man's assignment.

He absently touched the butt of the M-1 carbine strapped over his shoulder and experienced a sudden rush of memories. A twinge of melancholy that he suppressed by telling himself he had nothing to complain about. That he should be thankful for the opportunity to volunteer. Grateful for the opportunity to volunteer. Grateful for the nightly exercise, the cool, fragrant air. Proud of the slap of the M-1 against his shoulder blades, the crisp Hagah uniform that made him feel like a soldier again.

A scurrying sound crackled somewhere beyond the ridge and caused his heart to jump. He pulled the carbine down, held it in both hands, and waited. Silence, then another scurry, this time easy to classify: the frantic dash of a rodent or shrew. Letting out his breath, he kept his right hand clamped around the M-1, took the flashlight in his left, and skimmed the beam over the brush. A clump of weeds. A filmy swirl of night-flying insects.

Stepping away from the ridge, he commenced walking south. The barrenness of the road was broken at the crest by a stolid, many-roofed mass huddled around a high, peaked tower: the Amelia Catherine Hospital, arrogantly colonial on this Levantine stretch of mountaintop. Because the hospital compound was U.N. property, it was excluded from his route, but sometimes he liked to stop and take a break just outside the grounds. Smoke a cigarette and watch as the odor of Turkish tobacco stirred the goats and donkeys penned behind the main building. Why, he wondered, were the Arabs allowed to keep animals here? What did that say for the hygiene of the place?

His stomach growled. Absurd. He'd eaten a hearty dinner at eight, spent the next four hours sitting on the balcony while slowly ingesting the food Eva set out for him before she went to bed: dried apricots and apples, a string of fat Calimyrna figs, tea wafers, lemon cookies, marzipan, tangerines and kumquats, toasted gar'inim, jagged chunks of bittersweet chocolate, jelly candies, halvah. Topped off by an

Synopsis

The ancient hills of Jerusalem are known as the butcher's theater. Here upon this bloodstain stage, a faceless killer performs his violent speciality. The first to die brutally is a 15-year-old girl. She is drained of blood, then carefully bathed and shrouded in white. Precisely one week later a second victim is found. Veteran police inspector Daniel Sharavi and his crack team plunge deep into Jerusalem's streets, a city simmering with religious and poltical passions to hunt for a murderer whose insatiable taste for young Arab women could destroy the delicate balance on which Jerusalem's very survival depends.

Synopsis

They call the ancient hills of Jerusalem the butcher's theater. Here, upon this bloodstained stage, a faceless killer performs his violent specialty: The first to die brutally is a fifteen-year-old girl. She is drained of blood, then carefully bathed and shrouded in white. Precisely one week later, a second victim is found. From the sacred Wailing Wall to the monasteries where dark secrets are cloistered, from black-clad bedouin enclaves to labyrinthine midnight alleys, veteran police inspector Daniel Sharavi and his crack team plunge deep into a city simmering with religious and political passions to hunt for a murderer whos insatiable taste for young women could destroy the delicate balance on which Jerusalem's very survival depends.

A brilliant novel by a master of the genre, a vivid look at the tortured complexities of a psychopath's mind, a rich evocation of a city steeped in history -- this, and more, is The Butcher's Theater.

Synopsis

They call the ancient hills of Jerusalem the butcher's theater. Here, upon this bloodstained stage, a faceless killer performs his violent specialty: The first to die brutally is a fifteen-year-old girl. She is drained of blood, then carefully bathed and shrouded in white. Precisely one week later, a second victim is found. From the sacred Wailing Wall to the monasteries where dark secrets are cloistered, from black-clad bedouin enclaves to labyrinthine midnight alleys, veteran police inspector Daniel Sharavi and his crack team plunge deep into a city simmering with religious and political passions to hunt for a murderer whos insatiable taste for young women could destroy the delicate balance on which Jerusalem's very survival depends.

A brilliant novel by a master of the genre, a vivid look at the tortured complexities of a psychopath's mind, a rich evocation of a city steeped in history -- this, and more, is The Butcher's Theater.

From the Paperback edition.

Synopsis

Jerusalem Police Inspector David Sharavi and his hand-picked team search for a psychopathic serial killer amidst the sacred precincts, ancient monasteries, and alley ways of the Holy City. Reprint.